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Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo, wearing a beaded necklace and headband, holding a white ermine. An art printable for kids and families; free PDF.
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Download PDFPrintA young woman turned to one side, with a headband, a sheer veil, a long beaded necklace and a ribboned dress, holding an ermine.
Color the ermine white with soft gray shadows and the dress red and blue.
Research other animals that appear in famous paintings and what they mean.
During World War II the painting was stolen and then recovered after the war ended.
Lady with an Ermine is one of only a handful of portraits of women painted by Leonardo da Vinci, and many experts consider it one of his most beautiful. He made it around 1490 in Milan while working for Ludovico Sforza, the city's powerful duke. Today it hangs in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland.
Most historians believe the sitter is Cecilia Gallerani, an educated young woman at the Milan court who wrote poetry and played music. Leonardo painted her head and body turning in different directions, as if someone had just called her name. That natural, twisting pose was strikingly new at the time.
The ermine is there for a reason. This small animal, whose coat turns white in winter, stood for purity and self-control. Ludovico Sforza also used the ermine as one of his emblems, and the Greek word for the animal sounds a lot like the name Gallerani, a clever pun that Renaissance viewers loved.
Leonardo studied animal anatomy just as closely as human anatomy. That is why the ermine looks so alive, with its muscles, its raised paw and its alert head mirroring the young woman's pose. Portrait and pet make a perfect pair.
